Erosion of explosively compacted Mo/Cu electrodes in high-current arc discharges

Abstract

The erosion of molybdenum-copper composites produced by the explosive powder-compacting method has been studied in order to analyze the potential for their use as railgun electrodes. The results of experiments have shown that the erosion of Mo/Cu compacts at the same values of current impulse (I/sub max/=180 kA, T/sub max//spl ap/50 /spl mu/s, /spl int/Idt=15 C, /spl int/I/sup 2/dt=1.7/spl middot/10/sup 6/ A/sup 2//spl middot/s) is about 10 times less then the erosion of pure copper and is about 3 time less then the erosion of pure molybdenum. The loss of mass data curve has a flat minimum for molybdenum contents of 20 to 80 wt.%.